My Time as a Graduate Student

The word…”culture”

by Tina E on January 23, 2013

I just got back from a great weekend with Brian in Jacksonville, NC and one thing that I heard a lot of was the “culture” of Jacksonville, the culture of the church, the locals, and/or the culture of the Marine community on base and within Jacksonville city and how all these cultures are so different from any other community. It got me thinking of how much people use the world culture to describe the demographics of a place and how to describe the meaning of the way people act within a community. Which I will not disagree that is how we do use culture to describe the meaning of behaviors and distinguish one society from another.

There are many macrocosms within the microcosm of the American culture that do differ from one another once the details are broken down. The use of culture is to distinguish identity of a group to either ostracize, accept, compare, etc other societies to another. There is also a sense of how the public views each other through the opposing means of culture.

I am not too sure where I am going with this post other than that I was just fascinated with the heavy the use of culture through the public point of view and how it is used as a universal means of distinguishing personal identity. I heard a lot of “we are special/unique culture within this community” or “the culture is very different here.” As an anthropologist, I have heard and use the world culture within academia and with fellow students and professionals, but I just never really paid attention to how it was used in the public.

I know from being in Jacksonville it is different from where I have lived before, but that can be the same with anyone when they moved to another location. But being within a military community, there are very distinguishing customs, traditions, etc that are different from those outside of the military community. If I am not careful I will have another anthro project on my hands….